LUCERNE VALLEY - Nearly one hundred-fifty years after the tragedy, a group of activists gathered at the site of what was likely the largest massacre in the recorded history of Southern California:

. . . Although the entire continent had been affected by the plagues that spread from nation to nation after the arrival of European pirates in 1492, until 1813, encroachment inland had been relatively minimal. But that year, Yuhaviatam (aka Serrano) supported Tongva relations in a raid on the San Gabriel Mission and were thereafter pursued into the mountains, where Spanish soldiers killed several warriors and took some prisoners.

. . . The next few years brought a rapid succession of changes that would greatly impact the region: Mexico won its independence from Spain and the land, while legitimately Indian, was nominally transferred from the possession of the Kings of Aragon and Castille to the government of Mexico. Meanwhile, those rapacious white settlers who had long ago thrown off the yoke of the British kings who sought to limit their domination of the North American continent, had begun to explore California to see what natural resources they might exploit there...